


Natasi

by germanic



Category: Star Wars Expanded Universe, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-28 03:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12597356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/germanic/pseuds/germanic
Summary: A collection of short vignettes related to Natasi Daala.





	1. Chapter 1

The word home had meant little to Natasi since she was a child. Once it had been associated with a mother who showed her teeth when she smiled and a father who wore an Admiral’s uniform. But the image had fallen out of favor with their deaths and she let the word fall wayside, forgoing to use it unless forced.

The Nuns had insisted that the orphanage was their home, a blessing from the Empire. But, Natasi did not care for that at all. The place was an odd augmentation of religion and politics, creating an environment where the principle religion was to worship the government. It lacked the stories she had heard in her childhood, of sailors and warriors, of _Darakaer_ —

In the moments when she had been taken into the office of durasteel and white, she had beat out the rhythm on her chair. She wanted to call him forth, the great warrior, the one who would save her.

Natasi had sat, a woman’s hands on her shoulders. She hadn’t quite listened to everything they said about her. _Orphan. No family. Distraught._ The words had all blurred together, too formal for her five-year-old mind to fully comprehend. She’d simply ignored them and focused on her mission.

It had been the woman beside her who pushed her bony hand over Natasi’s, stopping the slow beat against metal. The old woman had hissed, “stop that,” and Natasi had because when she had dared move her fingers again, there had been a look that suggested the next punishment would be worse.

Now, a woman of twenty-five, she beat out the same rhythm with her fingertips. Natasi had lost the childhood fantasy that Darakaer would come for her, charging across the galaxy to find her on the Imperial Cruiser, but it didn’t stop her. The sound carried the reminder of a world that she had faint memories of, the most recent of them all mingling with a sense of disappointment.

Irmenu.


	2. Chapter 2

She was five, although her stature suggested six and so they continued to refer to her as the child of six standard years on every form. _But I am five_ she insisted every mention, only to be scolded by old women with their drawn faces.

When they were not paying her any mind, they talked amongst themselves, both praising themselves for collecting this new dependent and excusing her behavior as that of a hysterical child’s.

She, however, did not feel hysterical. Yes, her parents were dead. Yes, she was alone. But she was not what they described. At no point had she wailed uncontrollably, had screamed and pounded her fists, or done anything that suggested hysterics. She was simply quiet, reconsidering her place in the galaxy.

Which, at the present moment, seemed to suggest that she was largely insignificant. The Nuns who had misrecorded her birthdate also had spelt her name wrong. _Natsi Dala_  had been collected by the Nuns and she was six-years-old, not Natasi Daala, age five.

It was a strange new existence that Natasi considered. She wasn’t sure that she liked Natsi, didn’t like how the name sat on her tongue and lost the memory of her mother’s sing-song voice associated with it. Natsi was expected to be older and in ruins over the death of her parents, but Natasi wasn’t.

She was at a loss, yes, but not distraught. She did, after all, understand what had happened to a point. Her parents had not mysteriously disappeared, rather, they had been killed.

And, rather, cruelly at that. While she had been hiding, tears streaming against her will—her mother had always called her a willful child—she watched.

Yet, it was made to sound as though she was naive to the workings of the world. The Nuns spoke of her parents as if they had simply gone away for a long time, always adding an ambiguity that implied they could return. No, Natasi wanted to correct, they would not come back for her. Of course, perhaps in all of their revisions of her life, Natsi’s parents would come back for her, perhaps they had simply abandoned her for better things.

The more she considered Natsi, she didn’t like her much at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter skips ahead from the time set by the previous chapters.

“How did you beat the last simulation?”

 

“There’s a blind spot- on the left.”

 

The words were becoming mangled as he spoke, too much of his focus lost on her body and not on the day’s tests and practice runs. Manuals only taught her so much, Instructors only gave up so many secrets, but neither of them stood in her way to be the most successful, to become something more than some lowly corporal.

 

It could have been considered sabotage, she realized. Seducing the competition, the male students who did as well as she did and would be preferred over her. The Imperial Navy always chose men before women, liking its ranked officers to be men that fit an image. They had too much pride to let themselves salute a woman.

 

All because they considered her weaker, less suited to the job. They assumed her easy to manipulate, women as a whole the weaker sex. Yet, she found it ironic that men were far easier to manipulate. Sweet words, let them kiss her, let them think she swooned over them and they told her anything.

 

“Clever,” she said, a light smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. The compliment was enough to stoke his ego and make everything okay.

 

There were rules to manipulating men, ones that she knew and memorized, that she allowed to dictate how she handled them. Until they did something she thought worth rewarding, they knew her as Daala. Natasi came when they were good, a prize given to them to make them think they had clawed their way into her heart. Terms of endearment might follow--never mind how nauseating it could be to say them--as did the possibility of dates.

 

She had brought down prominent male cadets this way, learn their secrets and expose them. If she was diligent in her work, their being expelled was always a possibility, one that she secretly enjoyed.

 

However, in the case of this one, he had not been the target of her hate. She liked to think she used him efficiently enough to learn what wasn’t taught in textbooks or classes. She knew how to break the system like he did, but she would not be so egotistical to say she knew all of the shortcuts. Natasi Daala was no fool and knew to be humble when it mattered.

 

For this reason, she did not seek his removal from the academy, keeping what secrets she learned--the flaws that could be his undoing--to herself. He was a link for her, another mind to consider the harshness of the academy with. He was valuable, if not with connections and finances, in some reckless knowledge then. And it was that reason why Natasi allowed a relationship between them, for him to touch her, kiss her.

 

He would, however, stop being useful someday. Everyone outwore their usefulness, she knew. Some simply took longer than others to become dead weight. He had lasted four months--far longer than the others. He was clever, daring, and attempting to be something great. He lacked her dedication to the Empire--she had seen that flaw in him and held it close--but he had the fire of ambition in him, one that she warmed to--

 

\--and couldn’t quite imagine being without.

 

Laying against his chest, their breathing matched, she realized she had rather enjoyed the past months. Periods of studying had been broken up by kissing, of falling onto each other, fingers undoing uniforms with haste. It wasn’t passion, she had assured herself, promised herself. It was only a reward, baiting him, nothing more. She did not love him, was not romantically inclined to dream of marriage and days spent together.

 

She was a realist and loved only herself. She thought only of herself, not of others.

 

Yet, there was something that deep down she liked about not being alone, about presence of others. A lifetime spent alone, bitterly wishing that she had not been forsaken by fate had made her weak in this way, made her crave the moments she felt loved.

 

And weren’t they more alike? Without privilege, left to struggle on their own, taught to endure life without flinching. And here, in an academy surrounded by those who only knew wealth and privilege, it was comforting to have some other presence, someone’s understanding--

 

_I am like a child._

 

A feeling of foolishness erupted in her and she considered dressing quickly and leaving. To be so romantic jeopardized everything she had strived and struggled for, allowing a man to win in the game that was already skewed in his favor. She wanted to hit him in that moment, give him a black eye that he would pretend came from a fight with another man--for who wanted to be hit by a woman and admit it?

 

Yet.

 

She lingered there, settled comfortably into silence with him, pretending for one second she was not thrown into a war with herself and needed to justify everything.

 

Just once.


	4. Chapter 4

He had lost his boyish charm, that way that only he could voice plans which went against every rule and regulation written. He was an old man before her, grey starting to overtake brown, age lining his face. Struggle had taken it’s toll on him, like it had them all.

 

She had changed, too, bitterness having settled in her eyes, permanently fixing her lips into a frown. The stability she once had felt like it belonged to a previous lifetime, to a different woman. Any charms that she had slipped between her fingers with age, leaving her more wary, feeling unable to defend herself--she, again, only had a woman’s voice which was easily ignored.

 

In closed discussions across a broad table, she thought back to a time when they had been younger, ambition running in their veins. For one second, he no longer looked so haggard, looking like every other cadet with pressed uniform and crew-cut, set apart by a defiant charm in his eyes. She was brought back to a moment when her hair had been hacked short into a bob, her clothes harkening back to the dull colors of Imperial rule.

 

They had something then, something that time continued to rewrite for her. In the beginning it had been her play, her toying with him. Years of loss and losing wrote him into the enemy, the man she despised. And, yet, the final years of being brought back, to try and reconcile, made her wonder if it weren’t something actually nice. Had that been love and she too blind to it?

 

While he sat with a wife beside him, she remained alone, married to a cause, to a dilapidated government. She loved herself too much to love someone else, was too loyal to the system that gave her power to relinquish it to anyone else.

 

_I would have been a terrible wife for you._

 

He didn’t have the same drive, the same unchanging loyalty. He had been weak, led astray by his heart rather than focused. He couldn’t separate himself and it had been his downfall. She had been stronger, been more driven, stronger in her devotion.

 

_But you were weak._

 

She folded her hands on the table before her, speaking as a leader. Power had been what she wanted, it had always been what she wanted. It meant security, it meant safety, it meant strength. But such protection only came from the places near to the top. At the top, one could only fall--and the distance to the ground was great--but nestled somewhere in the middle, she could be secure.

 

Here she sat upon the tipping top, fearful of losing balance and tumbling down. Across from her, he was in the same position, near enough to the top that he could have plummeted. Yet, he had someone at his back, a kind of security that she almost envied. When she had Tarkin to call lover, she had security even in the place of Admiral, a lofty place she had dreamt of occupying.

 

Her fingers dug into the table, the surge of fear running cold in her veins. She feared falling, feared losing. Yet, while she kept her composure, the taste of terror was fresh, she felt five again, alone and helpless in a world that seemed too vast to comprehend.

 

_I am not as young as I once was, but then again, neither are you._


End file.
